i'm not sure who's fooling whom here...

And the controversy is indeed only just beginning. Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ has already divided Christians and Jews--months before its release. This is unsurprising, as people cannot be expected to take the killing of their God lightly. The problem lies in the portrayal of the Jews, the would-be assassins. Jewish leaders say that the film depicts them as Christ-killers, and thereby stirs up anti-Semitic feelings and thoughts in the general population. The Christians retort with a defense of truth: The four Gospels all say the Sanhedrin--the Jewish religious leadership at the time--opposed Christ and urged the Roman occupying powers to execute him. Of course, the problem with that argument is that the Jews have no reason to count anything in the Gospels as truth. However, that does not necessarily leave the Christians without recourse, since the Gospels have not been shown to be completely historically inaccurate. Sure, the Gospels are littered with fanciful parables the likes of which require a certain amount of faith in the story of Christ, but most historians agree that the general themes and some of the stories have a historical basis of truth to them quite apart from Christianity itself.

But Christians seem to be most controversial in their approach to this movie when they start explaining the emotional impact of the film vis a vis the Jews. Observe:

"This has a deep emotional resonance for Christians, it's like the emotion in 9/11," said Father Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a member of the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Believing Christians react to the Passion "like the way people responded to the firemen and police going in and offering their lives trying to save people... there is a lot of violence, but also the nobility and beauty of that self-sacrifice," he said.

To me, this is a most controversial analogy. Christ is likened to the 9/11 firemen and police. If that's the case, then are the Jews to take the role of the 9/11 terrorists? Very likely.

I'm not saying that the statement is incorrect, or that it should not have been made. My only point is that Christians should come to expect vigorous Jewish animosity, especially when making comments like those of Father Donald Senior. But given the two religions' histories, I'm not even sure that Christians mind it all that much. And that might not be such a bad thing. If the effect is to have a dialogue of the kind that has been latent or repressed all these years, then we're all the better for it. No one said it would be an easy dialogue to have.